A large body of research about children and race demonstrates that
children start to construct ideas about race very early; a sense of
white superiority and knowledge of racial power codes appears to develop
as early as pre-school31.
Marty32 states,

As in other Western nations, white children born in the United States
inherit the moral predicament of living in a white supremacist society.
Raised to experience their racially based advantages as fair and normal,
white children receive little if any instruction regarding the
predicament they face, let alone any guidance in how to resolve it.
Therefore, they experience or learn about racial tension without
understanding Euro-Americans’ historical responsibility for it and
knowing virtually nothing about their contemporary roles in perpetuating
it33.

At the same time that it is ubiquitous, white superiority also remains
unnamed and explicitly denied by most whites. If white children become
adults who explicitly oppose racism, as do many, they often organize
their identity around a denial of the racially based privileges they
hold that reinforce racist disadvantage for others. What is particularly
problematic about this contradiction is that white moral objection to
racism increases white resistance to acknowledging complicity with it.
In a white supremacist context, white identity in large part rests upon
a foundation of (superficial) racial toleration and acceptance. Whites
who position themselves as liberal often opt to protect what they
perceive as their moral reputations, rather than recognize or change
their participation in systems of inequity and domination. In so
responding, whites invoke the power to choose when, how, and how much to
address or challenge racism. Thus, pointing out white advantage will
often trigger patterns of confusion, defensiveness and righteous
indignation. When confronted with a challenge to white racial codes,
many white liberals use the speech of self-defense34. This discourse
enables defenders to protect their moral character against what they
perceive as accusation and attack while deflecting any recognition of
culpability or need of accountability. Focusing on restoring their moral
standing through these tactics, whites are able to avoid the question of
white privilege35.

Those who lead whites in discussions of race may find the discourse of
self-defense familiar. Via this discourse, whites position themselves as
victimized, slammed, blamed, attacked, and being used as “punching
bag[s]”36. Whites who describe interactions in this way are responding
to the articulation of counter narratives; nothing physically out of the
ordinary has ever occurred in any inter-racial discussion that I am
aware of. These self-defense claims work on multiple levels to: position
the speakers as morally superior while obscuring the true power of their
social locations; blame others with less social power for their
discomfort; falsely position that discomfort as dangerous; and
reinscribe racist imagery. This discourse of victimization also enables
whites to avoid responsibility for the racial power and privilege they
wield. By positioning themselves as victims of anti-racist efforts, they
cannot be the beneficiaries of white privilege. Claiming that they have
been treated unfairly via a challenge to their position or an
expectation that they listen to the perspectives and experiences of
people of color, they are able to demand that more social resources
(such as time and attention) be channeled in their direction to help
them cope with this mistreatment.

A cogent example of White Fragility occurred recently during a workplace
anti-racism training I co-facilitated with an inter-racial team. One of
the white participants left the session and went back to her desk, upset
at receiving (what appeared to the training team as) sensitive and
diplomatic feedback on how some of her statements had impacted several
people of color in the room. At break, several other white participants
approached us (the trainers) and reported that they had talked to the
woman at her desk, and she was very upset that her statements had been
challenged. They wanted to alert us to the fact that she literally
“might be having a heart-attack.” Upon questioning from us, they
clarified that they meant this literally. These co-workers were sincere
in their fear that the young woman might actually physically die as a
result of the feedback. Of course, when news of the woman’s potentially
fatal condition reached the rest of the participant group, all attention
was immediately focused back onto her and away from the impact she had
had on the people of color. As Vodde37 states, “If privilege is defined
as a legitimization of one’s entitlement to resources, it can also be
defined as permission to escape or avoid any challenges to this
entitlement”38.

The language of violence that many whites use to describe anti-racist
endeavors is not without significance, as it is another example of the
way that White Fragility distorts and perverts reality. By employing
terms that connote physical abuse, whites tap into the classic discourse
of people of color (particularly African Americans) as dangerous and
violent. This discourse perverts the actual direction of danger that
exists between whites and others. The history of brutal, extensive,
institutionalized and ongoing violence perpetrated by whites against
people of color—slavery, genocide, lynching, whipping, forced
sterilization and medical experimentation to mention a few—becomes
profoundly trivialized when whites claim they don’t feel safe or are
under attack when in the rare situation of merely talking about race
with people of color. The use of this discourse illustrates how fragile
and ill-equipped most white people are to confront racial tensions, and
their subsequent projection of this tension onto people of color39.
Goldberg40 argues that the questions surrounding racial discourse should
not focus so much on how true stereotypes are, but how the truth claims
they offer are a part of a larger worldview that authorizes and
normalizes forms of domination and control. Further, it is relevant to
ask: Under what conditions are those truth claims clung to most
tenaciously?

Bonilla-Silva41 documents a manifestation of White Fragility in his
study of color-blind white racism. He states, “Because the new racial
climate in America forbids the open expression of racially based
feelings, views, and positions, when whites discuss issues that make
them uncomfortable, they become almost incomprehensible – I, I, I, I
don’t mean, you know, but…- ”42. Probing forbidden racial issues results
in verbal incoherence - digressions, long pauses, repetition, and
self-corrections. He suggests that this incoherent talk is a function of
talking about race in a world that insists race does not matter. This
incoherence is one demonstration that many white people are unprepared
to engage, even on a preliminary level, in an exploration of their
racial perspectives that could lead to a shift in their understanding of
racism. This lack of preparedness results in the maintenance of white
power because the ability to determine which narratives are authorized
and which are suppressed is the foundation of cultural domination43.
Further, this lack of preparedness has further implications, for if
whites cannot engage with an exploration of alternate racial
perspectives, they can only reinscribe white perspectives as universal.

However, an assertion that whites do not engage with dynamics of racial
discourse is somewhat misleading. White people do notice the racial
locations of racial others and discuss this freely among themselves,
albeit often in coded ways. Their refusal to directly acknowledge this
race talk results in a kind of split consciousness that leads to the
incoherence Bonilla-Silva documents above44. This denial also guarantees
that the racial misinformation that circulates in the culture and frames
their perspectives will be left unexamined. The continual retreat from
the discomfort of authentic racial engagement in a culture infused with
racial disparity limits the ability to form authentic connections across
racial lines, and results in a perpetual cycle that works to hold racism
in place.